“The War of the Worlds” is a must-see film (the 1953 version) if you are a sci-fi fan and if you are a fan, you owe it to yourself to watch the definitive version of this film to date. Highly recommended!
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TITLE: The War of the Worlds – The Criterion Collection #1037
YEAR OF FILM: 1953
DURATION: 85 Minutes
DVD INFORMATION: Black and White, 1:37:1 Aspect Ratio, Monaural and Dolby Digital 5.1, English SDH
COMPANY: The Criterion Collection
RELEASED: July 7, 2020
Based on the novel by H.G. Wells
Directed by Byron Haskin
Screenplay by Barre Lyndon
Producer: George Pal
Associate Producer: Frank Freeman Jr.
Music by Leith Stevens
Cinematography by George Barnes
Edited by Everett Douglas
Art Direction by Albert Nozaki, Hal Pereira
Set Decoration by Sam Comer, Emile Kuri
Costume Design by Edith Head
Starring:
Gene Barry as Dr. Clayton Foresster
Ann Robinson as Sylvia Van Burren
Les Tremayne as Major General Mann
Robert Cornthwaite as Dr. Pryor
Sandro Giglio as Dr. Bilderbeck
Lewis Martin as Pastor Dr. Matthew Collins
William Phipps as Wash Perry
Cedric Hardwicke as Commentary
A mysterious, meteorlike object has landed in a small California town. All clocks have stopped. A fleet of glowing green UFOs hovers menacingly over the entire globe. The Martian invasion of Earth has begun, and it seems that nothing—neither military might nor the scientific know-how of nuclear physicist Dr. Clayton Forrester (Gene Barry)—can stop it. In the expert hands of genre specialists George Pal and Byron Haskin, H. G. Wells’s end-of-civilization classic receives a chilling Cold War–era update, complete with hallucinatory Technicolor and visionary, Oscar-winning special effects. Emblazoned with iconographic images of 1950s science fiction, The War of the Worlds is both an influential triumph of visual imagination and a still-disquieting document of the wonder and terror of the atomic age.
Back in 1897, a science fiction novel by H.G. Wells titled “The War of the Worlds” was serialized in “Pearson’s Magazine” in the UK and “Cosmopolitan” magazine in the US.
The storyline was one of the first stories involving extraterrestrials and in 1938, during an radio theater adaptation and broadcast of “The War of the Worlds” narrated by Orson Welles caused a panic as many people thought it was a real newscast as they missed the introduction which Wells had said it was a drama.
The 1953 film is a loose adaptation directed by Byron Haskin of the 1898 novel was a fascinating film in that it was one of the first science fiction films that did amazingly well in the box office, it also won an Academy award for “Best Visual Effects” and was selected for the United States National Film Registry in the Library of Congress, being deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.
And now “The War of the Worlds” was released on Blu-ray and DVD by the Criterion Collection featuring a new 4K restoration and remastering.
The film is set in Southern California, what looks like a meteorite falls from the sky and lands near the town of Linda Rosa.
As people from the area go to see the meteorite, to their shock, it’s a large piece of rock. Fortunately, scientists happen to be nearby, especially atomic scientist, Dr. Clayton Forrester (portrayed by Gene Barry).
While visiting, he meets the USC library science instructor Sylvia Van Buren (portrayed by Ann Robinson) and her uncle, Pastor Matthew Collins.
Upon seeing the meteorite, Dr. Forrester is a bit surprised it did not break up before impact. His instruments show the meteorite is radioactive and will expect it the following morning.
Dr. Forrester is invited to a dance that night and invited to stay at Pastor Collins home, while three people will stay behind to watch over the meteorite.
But when the three people start to see something being unscrewed, like a hatch, something emerges. The three men feel that it would be good to be the first contacts with what may be an alien species and they can be world famous.
Instead, the three men are vaporized by a blast which knocks out the power throughout the region.
They see flames emanating from the area of the meteorite and Dr. Forrester and the police go to check and they see the ashes of the three people who were watching over the meteorite. Dr. Forrester tells the police chief to call the military.
The United States Marine Corps arrive near the crash site and now reports of meteorites have landed all over the world and are now destroying cities.
While the military have their forces surrounding the meteorite, the surrounding meteorite-like shell is removed and the spacecraft is revealed.
Past Collins doesn’t like the idea of violence being used and goes out to make contact with the aliens but is vaporized. The military then begin their attack but they do no damage as the spacecraft have shields, while the military is vaporized.
As everyone tries to evacuate and Major General Mann (portrayed by Less Tremayne) wants nearby towns to be evacuated, Dr. Forrester and Sylvia must find a way to survive as they hide out at an abandoned farmhouse, which happens to be a nest of aliens.
Can humanity defeat the alien threat?
VIDEO & AUDIO:
“The War of the Worlds” is presented in color (1:37:1 Aspect Ratio). According to the Criterion Collection, the new digital restoration was created in 4K resolution on a DFT Scannity scanner from the original three strip Technicolor negatives. Thousands of isntances of negative and positive instances of dirt and debris, scratches, streaks, flairs and emulsion digs and several misregistration of the YCM film elements were manually repaired using MTI Fim’s DRS and Digital Vision’s Phoenix. and restored by Twentieth Century Fox.
The film looks absolutely great on DVD, the best I have watched of this film, but I can only imagine how this film would look even more amazing in HD via Blu-ray.
As for audio, the original monaural soundtrack was remastered from the preservation magnetic tracks using Avid’s Pro Tools and iZotope RX.
The 2018 5.1 remix was remastered from preservation magnetic tracks, several single-strip monaural music cues and archival sound effects by Ben Burll at Skywalker Sound in Lucas Valley, California.
Dialogue and music is clear with no sign of any hiss, crackling or pops throughout the film.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
“The War of the Worlds” comes with the following special features:
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New alternate 5.1 surround soundtrack, created by sound designer Ben Burtt and presented in DTS-HD Master Audio on the Blu-ray
- Audio commentary from 2005 featuring filmmaker Joe Dante, film historian Bob Burns, and author Bill Warren
- Movie Archaeologists, a new program on the visual and sound effects in the film featuring Burtt and film historian Craig Barron
- From the Archive, a new program about the film’s restoration featuring Barron, Burtt, and Paramount Pictures archivist Andrea Kalas
- Audio interview with producer George Pal from 1970
- The Sky Is Falling, a 2005 documentary about the making of the film
- The Mercury Theatre on the Air radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds from 1938, directed and narrated by Orson Welles
- Radio program from 1940 featuring a discussion between Welles and H. G. Wells, author of the 1897 novel The War of the Worlds
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
EXTRAS:
- A quad fold insert with an essay titled “Sky on Fire” by film critic J. Hoberman.
Watching “War of the Worlds” 57-years later, you can’t help but be amazed of how well this film holds up in 2020.
Sure, visual effects and logically, the dialogue and styles are of that era, but the storyline capturing an alien invasion, looting, rioting and all out action-adventure definitely makes for a great science action film and for me, even bettering its modern Steven Spielberg 2005 counterpart.
Whereas this film focuses on Dr. Forrester trying to find ways to defeat the aliens and to search for Sylvia, the 2005 film is about a father trying to take his two children to safety and survive the alien onslaught.
Both films are loose adaptations of the original H.G. Wells classic.
Whereas in today’s science fiction films, most human vs. alien films tend to be about the action and visual effects. This was true for this 1953 film but there is also a captivating storyline and a dramatic angle, along with side characters that add to the plot.
Whereas, the 2005 film, you expect Tom Cruise’s character to be a hero and pull of some heroic moves, Dr. Clayton Forrester and Sylvia Van Buren are not. They use whatever they can to fight with, Sylvia screams when she is frightened, Major General Mann remaining stoic, but the look on his face shows that humanity is losing the battle.
Both films have a similar ending but it’s how the film is executed, how many people are featured in the film, may the be bystanders, parishioners, there is an endearing quality to humanity trying to survive (there are some tones of religion to show hope), where the 2005 film looked dark and a bit bleak.
And possibly the best part of this Criterion Collection release is the new restoration work which was a painstaking effort but no doubt making the film look amazing. Now I watched the DVD version and I have a previous DVD version that was released and there is a major difference in color and quality which I can only imagine that the Blu-ray release probably look phenomenal.
The special features for “The War of the Worlds” is heavily focusing on the visual and the audio effects of the film but you get great information on how this film was made and how it has been well-received by generations of view fans. You also get the “Mercury Theatre on Air” radio program featuring Orson Welles and more.
Overall, “The War of the Worlds” is a must-see film (the 1953 version) if you are a sci-fi fan and if you are a fan, you owe it to yourself to watch the definitive version of this film to date. Highly recommended!